Manolo says, it is Monday, and you are no where near your desk, as the Great Unexpected Storm of 2012 has cut all the power to the office park where InEmTechCoCom, Inc. is located. So, like the school child with the snow cancellation, you have one day of glorious freedom, which you are hoping will turn into two days, which means three, because the July Fourth is Wednesday.

And so this morning, when you spontaneously awoke at 6AM, you thought you could roll over and go back to sleep, except you couldn’t because, as is often the case on the days off, your body forces you to conform to the normal schedule.

So, you got up, made the coffee, put one semi-stale mini-danish, leftover from Sunday, onto the plate, and sat down at the kitchen table with your laptop, because nothing says, “day off”, like sitting at the computer screen, checking your business email.

Yes, yes, you have big outdoor plans for the rest of the day, most of them involving cleaning up storm damage. You just needed the little bit of morning shoe time (and we are not talking about the sensible sneakers by Lacoste, either)…

Manolo says, here is the handsome pair of the Burberry sandals, the exact sort of thing you would see down at the country club, on the feet of that toned, WASPy, blonde woman with the handsome blue-eyed children who excel squash. But look! It is on the sale, more than 40% off of the regular price! Soon, you, too, shall be able to call your eldest son “Biff” with impunity.

This is the sort of shoe that the Manolo sometimes thinks of as being the “Mediterranean Strutting Shoe”, by which he means that not only would you would have to have the darker, Mediterranean skin to carry them off, but you could also only manage them if you were prepared to walk as if you were strutting along the corniche, heading back to your private yacht.

But, what is the problem?

It is summer, are you not already tanning yourself to bronzed perfection? And, on the advice of the Manolo, should you not always strut your stuff?

Manolo says, here is the stunning, stiletto-heeled cage sandal, the Briller from Pour La Victoire, that would perfectly offset your little dress of blackness, for that fancy evening out on the town. Mira! It is deeply on the sale, 70% off of the regular price, selling for less than $50!

Your name is Kenny. Not Kenneth, Kenny, and you own only four pairs of the long pants, two of them blue jeans.

Your best friend in the whole world is the chocolate lab named Bo, who wears the red bandanna around his neck, limps from the little bit of doggy arthritis, and is the sort of chick magnet (although he seems to mostly draw only single-mom divorcees who work in diners, and college girls studying recreation science).

You spend most of your time riding your mountain bike around town, reading undergraduate philosophy books, or hanging out at the indie coffee shop downtown, talking to college girls who are studying recreation science.

You’re 36-years-old and you’ve never left this town. Why should you? You were born here, went to school here, and graduated from college here (English, ’98). You even live in the tiny, two-bedroom house your grandmother left you up in the Avenues, stretching out that legacy into infinity (if you can keep your expenses down).

Some mornings, while you’re eating your bacon and eggs in the harvest-yellow kitchen with the avocado green stove, you look at the newspaper and think that maybe you should sell that house and get out of that town.

But then Bo hobbles in and puts his nose on your bare leg beneath your cargo shorts, and you think “Not yet, boy. Now while you’re still around.”

Manolo says, it is Monday, and you are back at your desk, and frankly, “discontent” does not even begin to describe it.

You had such the nice weekend. The neighbors at the end of the bloc, Bob and Karen, came over for the cookout on Saturday evening. They are so nice, and the weather was perfect. You had some little canapé things from Trader Joe’s, gin and tonics, potato salad, and Gary made the best St. Louis style ribs on the grill. Best of all, for whatever reason, the normally ravenous mosquitoes of late June, which usually come down like the wolves upon the fold, largely left you alone.

And the whole time, you thought to yourself: this is what life is really about, warm weather, convivial conversation, good food, fine drinks, and few invasive pests. What more do we really need?

And now, today, you had to go back to the corporate salt mine; loading your 16 tons of data into the computer on your desk, and what do you get?

Manolo says, it is Friday and you are saying to yourself, “Huzzah! The weekend, she is here,” even though, technically, the weekend, she is not here, as you still have several hours of paid drudgery left to perform.

Still, what is required at this very moment is the little day dreaming, something to take you away from that which is oppressive and dull, to the glittering imaginary place where you are the Queen of the May!

I need a pair of really fun sandals to wear, something to help me get through the DC summer. I should mention that I’ve been told I’m a bit quirky.

Delilah

Manolo says, ayyyyy! Summer has officially started and it is officially the first big heat wave. How do we know this? Just this morning, on the television, the Manolo saw Al Roker melting into the puddle on the sidewalk outside the NBC studios, screaming over and over, “the fire! It burns, it burns!”

Or, perhaps not.

Every year, the residents of the Washington D.C. go through the same ritual: decrying the first intensely humid and heatful day , calling it “unprecedented”, as if the Washington summers had never before been hot.

“What’s this,” says the average newcomer to the District, “It’s going to be 95 degrees outside? Why was I not informed about this oppressive climate?”

Thankfully, we live in the age of ubiquitous air conditioning, when we can scamper from the house, to the car, to the office with only the few seconds exposure to nature’s blast furnace. And yet, strangely, these few seconds are enough to cause widespread lamentations among the citizenry.

So, what does the quirky girl wear when the weather turns hot? Something Hellenic (it is frequently hot in Greece), such as these marvelously amusing sandals, the Calypso from Ancient Greek Sandals. With these on your feets you would be impervious to fire!

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Manolo the Shoeblogger is not Mr. Manolo Blahnik. This website is not affiliated in any way with Mr. Manolo Blahnik, any products bearing the federally registered trademarks MANOLO®, BLAHNIK® or MANOLO BLAHNIK®, or any licensee of said federally registered trademarks. The views expressed on this website are solely those of the author.